New: Pestilentia (free, open-ended, email, human, modern, vampire, rpg)

From: donotreply@pbm.com (PBM List Autoposter)

Date: Sat, 13 Jan 2007 20:13:02 +0000

Name:		Pestilentia
Costs:		Free
Email:		spraecantrix zat yahoo.com
Frequency:		1 - 2 per week
URL:		http://www.geocities.com/spraecantrix/
Type:		Call of Cthulhu in modern setting
Last-Update:		2007Jan12
Keywords: free, open-ended, email, human, modern, vampire, rpg

Description:

City of Lights. City of Hope. City of Arts and Culture. The names the
travel brochures use to describe Gotham are almost endless. They make it
seem like a great place to live and a wonderful destination for tourists.
If you ask anyone who actually lives in the city, or has even been there,
to describe it, however, it is more likely to be called the City of
Darkness, the City of Despair, the City of Crime and Danger. Those who
call it home dream of leaving. Those who visit look forward anxiously to
going home.
Yet for all its forbidding nature, life goes on in Gotham. Businesses
thrive or fail according to the skills of those that run them. Newspapers
are published. Products are manufactured and sold. Police cars cruise
their beats. Customs inspectors keep an eye on the shipping containers in
the docks . . .

*****************

17th Precinct GCPD Dispatch Facility,
Gotham Island, Old Gotham
2007-01-13-0217

"Sergeant, I've got a Major Daniels from the Port of Gotham Homeland
Security Force on the inter-task-force hotline asking for a half dozen
black and whites, a homicide team and the coroner's wagon down at Traskers
Yard. He's telling me that the night shift just dropped one of the
shipping containers, and it's full of dead bodies."

The dispatcher listened for a few more seconds on her headset before
toggling back into the desk sergeant's circuit.

"Sounds like he's calling in the Feds as well, sir." She listened again to
the panicky voice from the young military officer at the scene. Her
capable fingers flew across the touch screen, tracing the call, querying
its routings.

"Dipshit!" she muttered. "He's sending this out in clear. Every nut-job on
the Islands with a police band scanner will know what's going on down
there."

*******************

Traskers Shipping Yard
Port of Gotham, Old Gotham
2007-01-13-0239

Large cities never sleep. Even in the small hours of the morning work
continues. Power plants roar, hospitals moan, and the tides wait for no
man. The job of loading and unloading the many ships that ferry goods to
and from the great city goes on at all hours of the day and night.

Traskers is a small yard servicing the much diminished port facilities on
the Islands. In the 19th century these dock yards were the center of
Gotham's seafaring commerce. In today's world of container vessels and
railhead shipping yards the majority of the business has moved across the
Narrows to the mainland. Nevertheless a steady trickle of lesser ships
still calls in at the old docks and unloads their cargo at the more
central location.

Many of the old warehouses and sail-making facilities that clustered
around the old docks have been gentrified, converted to artist's lofts and
trendy condominiums. Amid the new population of stockbrokers and software
moguls there is a constant grumble about the working of the few actual
shipping facilities that survive. The lights and the noise late at night
keep the pencil pushers awake, and they don't like it. Indeed, tonight is
going to be complained about mightily at the monthly condo meetings and in
the snippy letters to the editor of the Daily Bugle. In addition to the
clanking of the chains and the whine of the hydraulics from the cranes,
there is growing cacophony of sirens and bullhorns.

Police cars have set up a cordon of bright yellow tape around a five block
area, not letting anyone in or out unless they can verify their reason for
coming or going. A coroner's wagon has pulled in to the front entrance of
Trasker's yard and a slew of other vehicles, official and private, but
each topped with its own flashing light in various hues of white, blue,
red, and yellow have parked at odd angles on the streets alongside it. A
TV news van has made its way into the center of the activity by creeping
through back alleys and the camera crew is busily seeking any footage they
can find.

*******************

WELCOME TO PESTLENTIA

I hope that the scenes above have given you an interest in playing in my
new game. It is set in Gotham City, but it is not a superheroes game. The
Batman is out there, somewhere, in the night, but he's not going to show
up to save anyone in my game. There will be characters from the DC
universe at the periphery of the action - Commissioner Gordon, for
instance - but that's just for flavor. They set the game in a world that
is not our own, but feels like it in most ways.

In this game the Player Characters will be those who are most likely to be
first on the scene at the incident described above. They could be:

- GCPD Homicide Detectives
- GC Coroners
- Homeland Security Officers (Customs, Coast Guard, other military, etc.)
- FBI Agents
- News Reporters
- Special Interests (Dockland Mob, Banker's PI's, etc.)

This is a horror game. Above and beyond the plain nastiness of the various
crimes that will be uncovered by the investigation, the clues will lead
the PC's into areas that the rest of the world considers supernatural. I
will be using a simple version of Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu rules to
govern character abilities and successes.

I am not a rules lawyer. I want the game to be driven by plot rather than
dice, but I will not allow over-the-top actions to take place
unchallenged.

If you would like to play, please submit a character description to me.
Tell me who you want to play, and why they would be at Taskers Yard at
2:30 am on a bitter cold January morning.

I'm looking forward to gaming with you.

[ This is a new entry for the PBM List. You can find the list
itself, and instructions for adding games or comments, at
http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/pbm_list/ -- greg ]